Life of John Keats Part 10

In the dark backward and abysm of time.

I find I cannot exist without Poetry--without eternal Poetry--half the day will not do--the whole of it--I began with a little, but habit has made me a Leviathan I had become all in a Tremble from not having written anything of late--the Sonnet over-leaf did me good. I slept the better last night for it--this Morning, however, I am nearly as bad again. Just now I opened Spenser, and the first Lines I saw were these--

The n.o.ble heart that harbours virtuous thought, And is with child of glorious great intent, Can never rest until it forth have brought Th' eternal brood of glory excellent.

'I shall forthwith begin my _Endymion_,' he adds, and looks forward to reading some of it out, when his correspondent comes to visit him, in a nook near the castle which he has already marked for the purpose.

But Haydon's prescription of solitude turned out the worst Keats could well have followed in the then state of his mind, fermenting with a thousand restless thoughts and inchoate imaginations and with the feverish conflict between ambition and self-distrust. The result at any rate was that he pa.s.sed the time, to use his own words, 'in continual burning of thought, as an only resource,' and what with that and lack of proper food felt himself after a week or ten days 'not over capable in his upper stories' and in need of change and companions.h.i.+p. He made straight for his last year's lodging at Margate and got Tom to join him there. Thence in the second week of May he writes a long letter to Hunt and another to Haydon. To Hunt he criticizes some points in the last number of the _Examiner_, and especially, in his kind-hearted, well-conditioned way, deprecates a certain vicious allusion to grey hairs in an attack of Hazlitt upon Southey. Later on we shall have to tell of the critical savagery of _Blackwood_ and the _Quarterly_, now long since branded and proverbial. But it should be borne in mind, as it by no means always is, that the Tories were far from having the savagery to themselves. When Hazlitt, for one, chose to strike on the liberal side, he could match Gifford or Lockhart or Wilson or Maginn with their own weapons. To realize the controversial atmosphere of the time, here is a pa.s.sage, and not the fiercest, from the Hazlitt article in which Keats found too venomous a sting. Southey's first love, rails Hazlitt, had been the Republic, his second was Legitimacy, 'her more fortunate and wealthy rival':--

He is becoming uxorious in his second matrimonial connection; and though his false Duessa has turned out a very witch, a murderess, a sorceress, perjured, and a harlot, drunk with insolence, mad with power, a griping rapacious wretch, b.l.o.o.d.y, luxurious, wanton, malicious, not sparing steel, or poison, or gold, to gain her ends--bringing famine, pestilence, and death in her train--infecting the air with her thoughts, killing the beholders with her looks, claiming mankind as her property, and using them as her slaves--driving every thing before her, and playing the devil wherever she comes, Mr Southey sticks to her in spite of everything, and for very shame lays his head in her lap, paddles with the palms of her hands, inhales her hateful breath, leers in her eyes and whispers in her ears, calls her little fondling names, Religion, Morality, and Social Order, takes for his motto,

Be to her faults a little blind, Be to her virtues very kind--

sticks close to his filthy bargain, and will not give her up, because she keeps him, and he is down in her will. Faugh!

It is fair to note that the mistress thus depicted as Southey's is an allegorical being, while the Blackwood scurrilities were often directly personal.

After asking how Hunt's own new poem, _The Nymphs_, is getting on, Keats tells how he has been writing some of _Endymion_ every day the last fortnight, except travelling days, and how thoughts of the greatness of his ambition and the uncertainty of his powers have thrown him into a fit of gloom; hinting at such moods of bleak and blank despondency as we shall find now and again figuratively described in the text of _Endymion_ itself.

I have asked myself so often why I should be a poet more than other men, seeing how great a thing it is,... that at last the idea has grown so monstrously beyond my seeming power of attainment that the other day I nearly consented with myself to drop into a Phaeton ... I see nothing but continual uphill journeying. Now is there anything more unpleasant than to be so journeying and to miss the goal at last?

But I intend to whistle all those cogitations into the sea, where I hope they will breed storms enough to block up all exit from Russia.

Does Sh.e.l.ley go on telling strange stories of the deaths of kings?[1]

Tell him there are strange stories of the deaths of poets. Some have died before they were conceived.

The same evening Keats begins to answer a letter of encouragement and advice he had just had from Haydon. This is the letter of Haydon's from which I have already quoted the pa.s.sage about the efficacy of prayer as Haydon had experienced it. Perfectly sincere and genuinely moved, he can never for a minute continuously steer clear of rant and fustian and self-praise at another's expense.

Never despair, he goes on, while the path is open to you. By habitual exercise you will have habitual intercourse and constant companions.h.i.+p; and at every want turn to the Great Star of your hopes with a delightful confidence that will never be disappointed. I love you like my own brother: Beware, for G.o.d's sake, of the delusions and sophistications that are ripping up the talents and morality of our friend.[2] He will go out of the world the victim of his own weakness and the dupe of his own self-delusions, with the contempt of his enemies and the sorrow of his friends, and the cause he undertook to support injured by his own neglect of character. I wish you would come up to town for a day or two that I may put your head in my picture. I have rubbed in Wordsworth's, and advanced the whole. G.o.d bless you, my dear Keats! do not despair; collect incident, study character, read Shakespeare, and trust in Providence, and you will do, you must.

Keats in answer quotes the opening speech of the King in _Love's Labour's Lost_,--

Let Fame, that all pant after in their lives Live registered upon our brazen tombs, etc.,

saying that he could not bear to think he had not the right to couple his own name with Haydon's in such a forecast, and acknowledging the occasional moods of depression which have put him into such a state of mind as to read over his own lines and hate them, though he has picked up heart again when he found some from Pope's Homer which Tom read out to him seem 'like Mice' to his own. He takes encouragement also from the notion that has visited him lately of some good genius--can it be Shakespeare?--presiding over him. Continuing the next day, he is downhearted again at hearing from George of money difficulties actual and prospective. 'You tell me never to despair--I wish it was as easy for me to deserve the saying--truth is I have a horrid morbidity of Temperament which has shown itself at intervals it is I have no doubt the greatest Enemy and stumbling block I have to fear--I may even say it is likely to be the cause of my disappointment.' Then referring to Haydon's warning in regard to Hunt, he goes half way in agreement and declares he would die rather than be deceived about his own achievements as Hunt is. 'There is no greater sin after the seven deadly,' he says, 'than to flatter oneself into the idea of being a great poet: the comfort is, such a crime must bring its own penalty, and if one is a self-deluder indeed accounts must one day be balanced.'

In the same week, moved no doubt by the difficulties George had mentioned about touching the funds due from their grandmother's estate, Keats writes to Taylor and Hessey, in a lively and familiar strain showing the terms of confidence on which he already stood with them, asking them to advance him an instalment of the agreed price for _Endymion_. He mentions in this letter that he is tired of Margate (he had already to another correspondent called it a 'treeless affair') and means to move to Canterbury. At this point there occurs an unlucky gap in Keats's correspondence. We know that he and Tom went to Canterbury from Margate as planned, but we do not know exactly when, nor how long he stayed there, nor what work he did (except that he was certainly going on with the first book of _Endymion_), nor what impressions he received. It was his first visit to a cathedral city, and few in the world, none in England, are more fitted to impress. Chichester and Winchester he came afterwards to know, Winchester well and with affection; but it was with thoughts of Canterbury in his mind that he planned, some two years later, first a serious and then a frivolous verse romance having an English cathedral town for scene (_The Eve of St Mark_, _The Cap and Bells_). The heroine of both was to have been a maiden of Canterbury called Bertha; not, of course, the historic Frankish princess Bertha, daughter of Haribert and wife of Ethelbert king of Kent, who converted her husband and prepared his people for Christianity before the landing of Saint Augustin, and who sleeps in the ancient church of Saint Martin outside the walls: not she, but some damsel of the city, named after her in later days, whom Keats had heard or read of or invented,--I would fain know which; but I have found no external evidence of his studies or doings during this spring stay at Canterbury, and his correspondence is, as I have said, a blank.

Some time in June he returned and the three brothers were together again: not now in City lodgings but in new quarters to which they had migrated in Well Walk, Hampstead. Their landlord was one Bentley the postman, with whom they seem to have got on well except that Keats occasionally complains of the 'young carrots,' his children, now for making a 'horrid row,' now for smelling of damp worsted stockings. The lack of letters continues through these first summer months at Hampstead. The only exception is a laughingly apologetic appeal to his new publishers for a further advance of money, dated June 10th and ending with the words,--'I am sure you are confident of my responsibility, and of the sense of squareness that is always in me.'

For the rest, indirect evidence allows us to picture Keats in these months as working regularly at _Endymion_, having now reached the second book, and as living socially, not without a certain amount of convivial claret-drinking and racket, in the company of his brothers and of his friends and theirs. Leigh Hunt was still close by in the Vale of Health, and both in his circle and in Haydon's London studio Keats was as welcome as ever. Reynolds and Rice were still his close intimates, and Reynolds's sisters in Lamb's Conduit Street almost like sisters of his own. He was scarcely less at home in the family of his sister-in-law that was to be, Georgiana Wylie. The faithful Severn and the faithful Haslam came up eagerly whenever they could to join the Hampstead party.

An acquaintance he had already formed at Hunt's with the Charles Dilkes and their friend Charles Brown, who lived as next-door neighbours at Wentworth Place, a double block of houses of their own building in a garden at the foot of the Heath, now ripened into friends.h.i.+p: that with Dilke rapidly, that with Brown, a Scotsman who by his own account held cannily aloof from Keats at first for fear of being thought to push, more slowly.

Charles Wentworth Dilke, by profession a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, by predilection a keen and painstaking literary critic and antiquary, had been stimulated by the charm of Lamb's famous volume of _Specimens_ to work at the old English dramatic poets, and had recently (being now twenty-seven) brought out a set of volumes in continuation of Dodsley's _Old Plays_. In matters political and social he was something of a radical doctrinaire and 'G.o.dwin-perfectibility man' (the label is Keats's), loving decision and positiveness in all things and being therein the very opposite of Keats, who by rooted instinct as well as choice allowed his mind to cherish uncertainties and to be a thoroughfare for all thoughts (the phrase is again his own). There were many but always friendly discussions between Keats and Dilke, and their mutual regard never failed. Charles Brown, Dilke's contemporary, schoolfellow, and close friend, was a man of Scottish descent born in Lambeth, who had in early youth joined a business set up by an elder brother in Petersburg. The business quickly failing, he had returned to London and after some years of struggle inherited a modest competence from another brother. A lively, cultivated, moderately successful amateur in literature, journalism, and drama, he was in person bald and spectacled, and portly beyond his years though active and robust; in habits much of a trencher-man ('a huge eater' according to the abstemious Trelawny) and something of a _viveur_ within his means; exactly strict in money matters, but otherwise far from a precisian in life or conversation; an ardent friend and genial companion, though cheris.h.i.+ng some fixed unreasonable aversions: in a word, a truly Scottish blend of glowing warm-heartedness and 'thrawn' prejudice, of frank joviality and cautious dealing.

It was in these same weeks of June or July 1817, soon after the beginning of the Oxford vacation, that Benjamin Bailey again came to town and sought after and learned to delight in Keats's company. He meant to go back and read at Oxford for the latter part of the vacation, and invited Keats to spend some weeks with him there. Keats accepted, and the visit, lasting from soon after mid August until the end of September, proved a happiness alike to host and guest. At this point our dearth of doc.u.ments ceases. Bailey's memoranda, though not put on paper till thirty years later, are vivid and informing, and Keats's own correspondence during the visit is fairly full. I will take Bailey's recollections first, and give them in his own words, seeing that they paint the writer almost as well as his subject; omitting only pa.s.sages that seem to drag or interrupt. First comes the impression Keats made on him at the time of their introduction in the spring, and then his account of the days they spent together in Oxford.

I was delighted with the naturalness and simplicity of his character, and was at once drawn to him by his winning and indeed affectionate manner towards those with whom he was himself pleased. Nor was his personal appearance the least charm of a first acquaintance with the young poet. He bore, along with the strong impress of genius, much beauty of feature and countenance. His hair was beautiful--a fine brown, rather than auburn, I think, and if you placed your hand upon his head, the silken curls felt like the rich plumage of a bird. The eye was full and fine, and softened into tenderness, or beamed with a fiery brightness, according to the current of his thoughts and conversation. Indeed the form of his head was like that of a fine Greek statue:--and he realized to my mind the youthful Apollo, more than any head of a living man whom I have known.

At the commencement of the long vacation I was again in London, on my way to another part of the country: and it was my intention to return to Oxford early in the vacation for the purpose of reading. I saw much of Keats. And I invited him to return with me to Oxford, and spend as much time as he could afford with me in the silence and solitude of that beautiful place during the absence of the numerous members and students of the University. He accepted my offer, and we returned together. I think in August 1817. It was during this visit, and in my room, that he wrote the third book of _Endymion_.... His mode of composition is best described by recounting our habits of study for one day during the month he visited me at Oxford. He wrote, and I read, sometimes at the same table, and sometimes at separate desks or tables, from breakfast to the time of our going out for exercise,--generally two or three o'clock. He sat down to his task,--which was about 50 lines a day,--with his paper before him, and wrote with as much regularity, and apparently as much ease, as he wrote his letters.... Sometimes he fell short of his allotted task, but not often: and he would make it up another day. But he never forced himself. When he had finished his writing for the day, he usually read it over to me: and he read or wrote letters until we went for a walk. This was our habit day by day. The rough ma.n.u.script was written off daily, and with few erasures.

I remember very distinctly, though at this distance of time, his reading of a few pa.s.sages; and I almost think I hear his voice, and see his countenance. Most vivid is my recollection of the following pa.s.sage of the finest affecting story of the old man, Glaucus, which he read to me immediately after its composition:--

The old man raised his h.o.a.ry head and saw The wildered stranger--seeming not to see, The features were so lifeless. Suddenly He woke as from a trance; his snow white brows Went arching up, _and like two magic ploughs Furrowed deep wrinkles in his forehead large, Which kept as fixedly as rocky marge, Till round his withered lips had gone a smile._

The lines I have italicised, are those which then forcibly struck me as peculiarly fine, and to my memory have 'kept as fixedly as rocky marge.' I remember his upward look when he read of the 'magic ploughs,' which in his hands have turned up so much of the rich soil of Fairyland.

When we had finished our studies for the day we took our walk, and sometimes boated on the Isis.... Once we took a longer excursion of a day or two, to Stratford upon Avon, to visit the birthplace of Shakespeare. We went of course to the house visited by so many thousands of all nations of Europe, and inscribed our names in addition to the 'numbers numberless' of those which literally blackened the walls. We also visited the Church, and were pestered with a commonplace showman of the place.... He was struck, I remember, with the simple statue there, which, though rudely executed, we agreed was most probably the best likeness of the many extant, but none very authentic, of Shakespeare.

His enjoyment was of that genuine, quiet kind which was a part of his gentle nature; deeply feeling what he truly enjoyed, but saying little. On our return to Oxford we renewed our quiet mode of life, until he finished the third Book of _Endymion_, and the time came that we must part; and I never parted with one whom I had known so short a time, with so much real regret and personal affection, as I did with John Keats, when he left Oxford for London at the end of September or the beginning of October 1817.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PL. IV

_Life-mask of Keats

From an electrotype in the National Portrait Gallery_]

Living as we did for a month or six weeks together (for I do not remember exactly how long) I knew him at that period of his life, perhaps as well as any one of his friends. There was no reserve of any kind between us.... His brother George says of him that to his brothers his temper was uncertain; and he himself confirms this judgment of him in a beautiful pa.s.sage of a letter to myself. But with his friends, a sweeter tempered man I never knew. Gentleness was indeed his proper characteristic, without one particle of dullness, or insipidity, or want of spirit. Quite the contrary. 'He was gentle but not fearful,' in the chivalric and moral sense of the term 'gentle.'

He was pleased with every thing that occurred in the ordinary mode of life, and a cloud never pa.s.sed over his face, except of indignation at the wrongs of others.

His conversation was very engaging. He had a sweet toned voice, 'an excellent thing' in _man_ as well as 'in woman....' In his letters he talks of _suspecting_ everybody. It appeared not in his conversation.

On the contrary, he was uniformly the apologist for poor, frail human nature, and allowed for people's faults more than any man I ever knew, especially for the faults of his friends. But if any act of wrong or oppression, of fraud or falsehood, was the topic, he rose into sudden and animated indignation. He had a truly poetic feeling for women; and he often spoke to me of his sister, who was somehow withholden from him, with great delicacy and tenderness of affection. He had a soul of n.o.ble integrity: and his common sense was a conspicuous part of his character. Indeed his character was in the best sense manly.

Our conversation rarely or never flagged, during our walks, or boatings, or in the evening. And I have retained a few of his opinions on Literature and criticism which I will detail. The following pa.s.sage from Wordsworth's Ode on Immortality was deeply felt by Keats, who however at this time seemed to me to value this great Poet rather in particular pa.s.sages than in the full-length portrait, as it were, of the great imaginative and philosophic Christian Poet, which he really is, and which Keats obviously, not long afterwards, felt him to be.

Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanis.h.i.+ngs; Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized, _High instincts, before which our mortal nature_ Did tremble like a guilty thing surprized.

The last lines he thought were quite awful in their application to a guilty finite creature, like man, in the appalling nature of the feeling which they suggested to a thoughtful mind. Again, we often talked of that n.o.ble pa.s.sage in the lines on _Tintern Abbey_:--

That blessed mood, In which _the burthen of the mystery_, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world Is lightened.

And his references to this pa.s.sage are frequent in his letters.--But in those exquisite stanzas,

She dwelt among the untrodden ways, Beside the springs of Dove,

ending,--

She lived unknown and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and oh, _The difference to me_.

The simplicity of the last line he declared to be the most perfect pathos.

Among the qualities of high poetic promise in Keats was, even at this time, his correct taste. I remember to have been struck with this by his remarks on that well known and often quoted pa.s.sage of the _Excursion_ upon the Greek Mythology--where it is said that

Fancy fetched Even from the blazing chariot of the Sun A beardless youth who touched a golden lute, _And filled the illumined groves with ravishment_.

Keats said this description of Apollo should have ended at the 'golden lute,' and have left it to the imagination to complete the picture, _how_ he 'filled the illumined groves.' I think every man of taste will feel the justice of the remark.

Every one now knows what was then known to his friends that Keats was an ardent admirer of Chatterton. The melody of the verses of the marvellous Boy who perished in his pride, enchanted the author of _Endymion_. Methinks I now hear him recite, or _chant_, in his peculiar manner, the following stanza of the Roundelay sung by the minstrels of Ella:--

_Come with acorn cup and thorn_ Drain my hertys blood away; Life and all its good I scorn; Dance by night or feast by day.

The first line to his ear possessed the great charm. Indeed his sense of melody was quite exquisite, as is apparent in his own verses; and in none more than in numerous pa.s.sages of his _Endymion_.